Tim Ong is a client partner with Worley Consulting based in Houston, Texas, with over 20 years of experience across the energy, resources, and infrastructure sectors. His career has spanned technical, operational, commercial, and advisory roles with organizations including Baker Hughes, Chevron, BHP, Woodside Energy, and Worley Consulting.
Ong's journey offers another possibility. His career began in medical instrumentation and blood-flow measurement before moving into oil and gas, where he helped develop multiphase-flow measurement technology. From there, he expanded into product management, human-capital strategy, operations, venture capital, digital transformation, innovation, consulting, and strategic customer engagement.
Although the roles changed, the foundation remained consistent: curiosity, transferable technical knowledge, a willingness to enter unfamiliar territory, and a commitment to learning from every opportunity. For students and young professionals navigating a changing energy industry, his story carries an encouraging message: a career does not need to be linear to be purposeful.
Finding Opportunity Between Two Disciplines
Ong did not begin his career in petroleum engineering. His early background was in electronics engineering and medical instrumentation, including measurement of blood flow and cancer therapeutics. His transition into oil and gas came through a UK Department of Trade and Industry-supported collaboration between Robert Gordon University and Expro. The project brought academic research and industry together to develop a new approach to multiphase flow measurement.
At first, the move from medicine to petroleum may have appeared unconventional. Ong recognized a useful technical parallel. Blood is a complex flowing system involving gases, liquids, and solids, including oxygen, carbon dioxide, plasma, and blood cells. Multiphase production similarly requires the measurement of oil, gas, and, in some cases, solids such as sand.
Rather than treating his medical background as unrelated, he used it as a different lens through which to understand the oilfield challenge. This cross-disciplinary perspective contributed to the development of multiphase flow-measurement technology that was later patented by Baker Hughes. The transition demonstrated that entering a new industry does not always mean starting again. Knowledge can often be translated and applied in a new context.
The Importance of Mentorship
Technical transfer alone was not enough. To design technology for the petroleum industry, Ong needed to understand petroleum systems, operating environments, and industry requirements.
Academic mentorship helped bridge that gap. He recalled how Professor Babs Oyeneyin provided an informal petroleum engineering crash course, helping him develop the industry knowledge needed to complement his existing technical capability, which he will be forever grateful.
The experience highlights an important lesson for young professionals: entering an unfamiliar field becomes more manageable when curiosity is combined with the humility to seek guidance. Mentors can help professionals recognize which knowledge matters most, understand the language of a new industry, and avoid learning every lesson through trial and error.
From Developing Technology to Building a Business
After the research project, Ong joined Baker Hughes as a flow-measurement specialist. His responsibilities eventually expanded beyond research and engineering into product-line management, introducing him to manufacturing, marketing, sales, customer engagement, and the commercial work required to bring technology into the market.
Through peer support, structured training, and practical experience, he learned how an engineering product becomes a business. The product line eventually achieved approximately 50% market share.
For technically trained professionals, this transition offers a valuable reminder: developing a successful technology is only part of innovation. A product must address a genuine customer problem, be manufacturable and commercially sustainable, and be clearly communicated and supported throughout its operating life.
Choosing Opportunities That Create Learning
When Ong felt he had completed what he could in product management, he asked for a new challenge. The response was unexpected: moving into human resources.
The role focused on developing human-capital strategies across Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America. One priority was supporting national oil companies seeking to strengthen local capability rather than relying primarily on expatriate workforces.
For an engineer accustomed to systems and technologies, human behavior introduces a different kind of complexity. The experience broadened his view of leadership: business strategy and people strategy cannot be separated. Organizations need the right talent, capability, succession planning, and working environment to deliver their commercial objectives.
Operations, Leadership, and Clear Expectations
He later moved into operations leadership in Norway, where he worked with customers like Equinor, ConocoPhilips, and Lundin, supported local workforce development, and managed the competing demands of customers, employees, revenue, and operational performance.
When discussing operational pressure, he emphasized that leaders should establish a clear purpose and translate it into responsibilities, boundaries, expectations, and cascading key performance indicators. When people understand what the team must achieve and how their contribution supports that objective, uncertainty and organizational friction can be reduced.
Clear expectations also support evidence-based discussions about performance and career progression. This lesson came partly through experience. In an early management role, unclear expectations created additional pressure around responsibilities and promotion conversations. Over time, he learned that clarity at the beginning is more effective than repeatedly resolving ambiguity later.
Learning To Evaluate Innovation
Another major transition came when Chevron approached Ong regarding a technology-venture role. The opportunity required him to evaluate startups from technical and commercial perspectives, identify suitable co-investors, and consider what each investor could contribute beyond capital, such as pilot locations, manufacturing capability, or industry access.
The experience expanded his exposure beyond conventional oil and gas to technologies involving hydrogen, solar energy, and energy storage. It also sharpened his understanding of technical readiness, commercial potential, market fit, and the capabilities required to scale an idea.
For young engineers, the lesson is significant. Technical excellence is essential, but it is not the sole determinant of whether an innovation succeeds. A promising solution requires a credible application, a realistic deployment pathway, appropriate partnerships, and a clear value proposition.
Returning to the Technical Foundation
Career reinvention does not always mean moving continually farther away from technical work. Following a downturn, he returned to a technical advisory role in multiphase measurement at Chevron. His responsibilities included validating technologies for major projects and examining engineering, design, testing, integration, and commissioning requirements.
His return illustrates the enduring value of a strong technical foundation. Commercial, operational, and strategic experience did not replace his original expertise. Instead, those experiences gave him a broader perspective from which to apply it.
During this period, mentoring graduate engineers became an important part of his work. Developing successors strengthened organizational capability and made future career movement possible. A professional who remains the only person capable of performing a role may become difficult to replace. By sharing knowledge and preparing others, leaders create capacity for both the organization and themselves.
Digital Transformation With a Business Purpose
At BHP, Ong moved into digital transformation and strategy across petroleum, iron ore, copper, and coal. The challenge was not simply to identify interesting digital technologies. It was to determine where data and technology could have the greatest influence on cost, safety, productivity, and business value.
Because capital is limited, potential projects had to be compared and prioritized according to likely impact and feasibility. His responsibilities later expanded into commodity strategy, considering technological developments, changing markets, material availability, and the long-term relevance of different commodities. This work reinforced copper as a strategic priority.
The experience provides a practical principle for digital transformation: begin with the business problem, not the technology. An initiative should connect clearly to safety, productivity, reliability, revenue, cost, or another defined organizational outcome.
Exploring the Changing Energy Landscape
Following the merger of BHP Petroleum and Woodside, he worked in innovation and explored technologies that could support continuous improvement or create new business opportunities. This included consideration of nuclear and geothermal energy.
Evaluating these opportunities requires looking beyond technical possibility to strategically fit, transferable capability, available resources, operating models, and economics. Geothermal, for example, could draw on capabilities familiar to oil and gas, including drilling, subsurface knowledge, geology, and rotating equipment operations. However, transferable capability alone did not establish a viable business; resource conditions and economics also needed to support the opportunity.
This disciplined approach matters as energy organizations evaluate unfamiliar technologies. Innovation requires imagination, but strategy requires the willingness to distinguish between an interesting possibility and a sustainable opportunity.
Build From the Foundation You Already Have
One of Ong’s most relevant messages for young professionals is to begin with the strengths they already possess. For an engineer, this may be technical expertise, analytical thinking, field experience, or knowledge of a particular operating environment. For someone from human resources, finance, or another discipline, the initial foundation will be different.
The next step is to identify the missing capability. A technical professional may need to strengthen communication, commercial awareness, leadership, data literacy, or customer engagement. A professional with strong interpersonal skills may need greater technical or domain knowledge. Development should therefore be deliberate and tailored rather than based on a universal formula.
This mindset reframes career movement. Transitioning into a new area does not require abandoning earlier experience. Each role can add another layer of capability to an existing foundation.
Passion, Purpose, and the Nonlinear Career
Ong’s journey challenges the assumption that moving between disciplines reflects a lack of direction. His transitions were connected by a consistent desire to learn, solve meaningful problems, and contribute in new ways.
Medical instrumentation led to flow measurement. Technical development led to product leadership. Product leadership opened the door to human-capital strategy and operations. Those experiences supported later work in investment, digital strategy, innovation, and customer engagement.
He advised young professionals to connect personal interests with the purpose of their role and organization. When passion and purpose reinforce one another, professionals are more likely to remain motivated, continue developing, and pursue greater responsibility. A career can be measured not only by job titles, but by capabilities developed, people supported, problems solved, and value created.
The Way Ahead
The energy industry is changing rapidly. Engineers entering the profession will encounter developments in artificial intelligence, data, automation, new-energy technologies, digital operations, and evolving commercial models.
Technical knowledge will remain important, but young professionals will also need adaptability, communication, commercial awareness, and the judgment to connect technology with real operational and customer needs.
A Practical Framework for Young Professionals
- Use existing expertise as a foundation rather than a boundary.
- Remain curious when entering unfamiliar environments.
- Accept opportunities that create meaningful learning.
- Seek mentors who can help bridge knowledge gaps.
- Understand the customer and business problems behind the technology.
- Set clear expectations when leading people.
- Develop successors and share knowledge.
- Connect personal passion with organizational purpose.
- Allow a career to evolve without insisting that every move follow a straight line.
Farhan Khan, SPE, is a field engineer at Weatherford, specializing in artificial lift systems and digital solutions through the company’s Next Gen Leadership Development Program. His work focuses on drilling and production technologies, digital solutions, and field operations, with interests in leadership development and energy transition. He is the Young Professionals representative on the SPE Flow Measurement Technical Section Board, program chair for the Australasia of Drilling Systems Advancement Technical Section, president and communication chair of the IADC Australasia Young Professionals Subcommittee, and a director and Young Professionals chair of the SPE Northeast India Section. He has actively contributed to professional development initiatives across both SPE and IADC, fostering collaboration and engagement among young professionals. He holds a master’s degree of professional engineering in petroleum engineering from Curtin University, Australia, and is passionate about innovation, digital transformation, and developing the next generation of energy professionals.
Ali Abu Ikhzam, SPE, is a service engineer at TechnipFMC, specializing in multiphase meters. His work focuses on projects and services for metering systems, with interests in project management and business development. He is the young professionals (YPs) representative on the board of the SPE Flow Measurement Technical Section, a member of the SPE Stavanger Section Young Professionals Board, and the founder and YP chair of the SPE Libya Section. He has been an active SPE member for over 10 years, contributing to technical and professional development initiatives across the Society. He holds a master's degree in petroleum engineering from Universiti Teknologi Petronas and is passionate about digitalization, automation, and energy transition.